be determined.  The English language was giving our generals almost as much trouble as were the Southerners at this time; so that in a few short weeks material for endless discussion was furnished by the orders, telegrams, and replies which were bandied between Pope and Porter, McClellan and Halleck.  A large part of the history of the period consists of the critical analysis and construing of these documents.  What did each in fact mean?  What did the writer intend it to mean?  What did the recipient understand it to ’mean?  Did the writer make his meaning sufficiently clear?  Was the recipient justified in his interpretation?  Historians have discussed these problems as theologians have discussed puzzling texts of the New Testament, with not less acerbity and with no more conclusive results.  Unquestionably the capacity to write two or three dozen consecutive words so as to constitute a plain, straightforward sentence would have been for the moment a valuable adjunct to military learning.

The news of the defeat brought dismay, but not quite a panic, to the authorities in Washington.  In fact, there was no immediate danger for the capital.  The army from the Peninsula was by this time distributed at various points in the immediate neighborhood; and a force could be promptly brought together which would so outnumber the Confederate army as to be invincible.  Yet the situation demanded immediate and vigorous action.  Some hand must seize the helm at once, and Pope’s hand would not do; so much at least was entirely certain.  He had been given his own way, without interference on the part of President or secretary, and he had been beaten; he was discredited before the country and the army; nothing useful could now be done with him.  Halleck was utterly demoralized, and was actually reduced to telegraphing to McClellan:  “I beg of you to assist me, in this crisis, with your ability and experience.”  It was the moment for a master to take control, and the President met the occasion.  There was only one thing to be done, and circumstances were such that not only must that thing be done by him, but also it must be done by him in direct opposition to the strenuous insistence of all his official and most of his self-constituted advisers.  It was necessary to reinstate McClellan.

It was a little humiliating to be driven to this step.  McClellan had lately been kept at Alexandria with no duty save daily to disintegrate his own army by sending off to Washington and to the camp of his own probable successor division after division of the troops whom he had so long commanded.  Greatly mortified, he had begged at least to be “permitted to go to the scene of battle.”  But he was ignored, as if he were no longer of any consequence whatsoever.  In plain truth it was made perfectly obvious to him and to all the world that if General Pope could win a victory the administration had done with General McClellan.  Mr. Lincoln described the process